Kenwood is one of England’s most well-known country houses located in what is now part of suburban London. In 1928, it became the home of the Iveagh Bequest, a superb collection of paintings donated by Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh (1847-1927). The collection was shaped by the tastes of the Gilded Age – when the Earl shared the cultural stage and art market with other industry titans such as the Rothschilds, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Henry Clay Frick. Acquired mainly from 1887 to 1891, the Earl’s purchases reveal the typical taste for portraiture, landscape, and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art found in English aristocratic collections, and include works by artists such asGainsborough, Vermeer, Lawrence, Hals, van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Reynolds.

Speaker Julius Bryant is keeper of word and image at the Victoria and Albert Museum and formerly held the positions of curator of the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood and chief curator at English Heritage. He will explore Kenwood and the Iveagh Bequest collection highlighting works that will be on exhibition in the United States in 2013.